I decided to try to learn a bit about tin bashing so I bought a 2000 Dodge 4x4 which had been in an accident. Had a custom bumper which saved the grill and punched out the lights and damaged a bit of fenders.

I've been driving around the back roads with it just for fun, and one cold day in January as I was about 8 miles from home the trans went into neutral.
I ended up walking and checking each neighbor (none who were home) and finally someone came by and I borrowed a phone and called the wife for a tow.

It's been parked in the snowbank while I completed the quad power steering, and put a shiny new grill on my truck, and finally we got it into the shop.
My nephew was full of dire predictions, as he has worked on GM automatics, and was grumbling about clutch packs, etc. I told him that this is old school and has bands that most people forget to adjust or don't even know about.
So we dropped the pan and cleaned out the crap and I welded a drain plug into the Trans pan. New filter installed, checked the band settings and honestly they were not bad at all. So I put it back together and decided to flush it. I have a bit over 500 liters of electrical transformer oil, which I use for Hydraulic oil. It is a clear clean mineral oil. From Wiki:

Quote:

Transformer oil or insulating oil is an oil that is stable at high temperatures and has excellent electrical insulating properties. It is used in oil-filled transformers, some types of high-voltage capacitors, fluorescent lamp ballasts, and some types of high-voltage switches and circuit breakers. Its functions are to insulate, suppress corona discharge and arcing, and to serve as a coolant.

I filled the trans with this oil and put it in gear and it wanted to go right now.
I put it in neutral so the oil would circulate and let it run for a while. Then put it through it's paces and checked all 4 gears and OD lockout.
All is perfect.
The oil seems clean still, and I will leave it alone until some parts come in. I want to replace the accumulator and spring, and the pressure transducer and pressure regulating solenoid. So I'll have the pan off for that.

"I must abide by my core values, my ethical responsibilities and constitutional obligations. There can be a cost to acting on one’s principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them.” Jane Philpott

Well, yeah, the house move will probably supersede everything in the near future, but sometimes just letting it stew and thinking, is often more productive then flying at it and trying to beat the clock.

"I must abide by my core values, my ethical responsibilities and constitutional obligations. There can be a cost to acting on one’s principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them.” Jane Philpott

...but sometimes just letting it stew and thinking, is often more productive then flying at it and trying to beat the clock...

Yeah, over the years I've had more than one project that had me tearing my hair out because of issues of one sort or another. Walking away and letting it percolate for a few days sometimes resulted in seeing a whole new--and often easier--way to approach the job. And, in a few cases the time off made us realize that the job was never going to be a winner and the best solution was to call the customer and tell him that his project died...

__________________Keith

Measure twice and cut once...or...wait, was that the other way around?